A Trip to the Used Bookstore

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TylerRay

Puritan Board Graduate
We made a trip to my favorite used bookstore today. I picked up several promising volumes, including:

A Guide to the Westminster Standards, James E. Bordwine
The Heidelberg Catechism: A Study Guide, G. I. Williamson
Testaments of Love: A Study of Love in the Bible, Leon Morris
Peaceable Fruit for the Nurture of Covenant Youth, Gertrude Hoeksema
Worship (part of the Guides to the Reformed Tradition series), Hughes Oliphant Old
William James and John Dewey, Gordon H. Clark
The Flight of Humanity, R. J. Rushdoony

What Reformed treasures have you found while perusing your local used bookstore?
 
Do online bookstores count? (Sadly it is much harder to "browse the shelves" and thumb through a volume online.)
 
Best thing I've ever seen in any of the used bookstores around here is something by CS Lewis. Otherwise it's almost entirely new age stuff or Osteen. Or is there a difference?
 
Some favorites:
The FPP version of the Westminster Standards
1611 reprint of the KJV (except with Roman type instead of Gothic in most places)
WCF book by GI Williamson
Several puritan paperbacks (Reformed Pastor by Baxter recently)

Probably mostly from the same favorite you have Tyler.
 
Mine was not local, but in America! A ministerial friend from Scotland was appointed
to serve a church in Livonia for 6 months, and invited my wife and myself to over. This
was about 22yrs ago. My friend is a case of serendipity when it comes to secondhand
book shops. He always strikes gold! But on taking us to visit Plymouth we dropped into
a second hand Funiture shop on the off chance that there might be some treasures there.
He went along some bookcases on one side and I the other. All the shelves were empty,
but casting an eye onto a ground level shelf, there sitting iwith glorious appeal and isolation was
a full set of Matthew Henry in pristine condition. In fact never been opened!
This gave me two unexpected pleasures, in that for once I had trumped my friend, and also the
added bonus of the shopkeeper only charging 3 dollars for each.
 
There's been a couple of guys in my area who've dumped their libraries into a local bookstore after going off the rails-- one into Greek Orthodoxy and one into some flavor of neo-orthodoxy. Hate their wandering, but made for some great finds. Have probably picked up 40-50 good titles. Some which come to mind are-- Hetherington's History of the Westminster Assembly, Gerstner's Book on Dispensationalism, AA Hodge Outlines of Theology, David Hall Savior or Servant? in nice hardback, Thomas Manton's Commentary on James, J.I. Packer A Quest for Godliness, Bainton's biography of Martin Luther, Charles Bridge's commentary on Proverbs...
 
There's been a couple of guys in my area who've dumped their libraries into a local bookstore after going off the rails-- one into Greek Orthodoxy and one into some flavor of neo-orthodoxy. Hate their wandering, but made for some great finds. Have probably picked up 40-50 good titles. Some which come to mind are-- Hetherington's History of the Westminster Assembly, Gerstner's Book on Dispensationalism, AA Hodge Outlines of Theology, David Hall Savior or Servant? in nice hardback, Thomas Manton's Commentary on James, J.I. Packer A Quest for Godliness, Bainton's biography of Martin Luther, Charles Bridge's commentary on Proverbs...

Very nice! Particularly Manton on James and Bridges on Proverbs.

My used bookstore hall of fame would definitely include Berkhof's Systematic Theology, Hoeksema's commentary on Revelation, Pink's The Sovereignty of God (Baker Hardback), Herman Ridderbos's Paul: An Outline of his Theology, Vos's Eschatology of the Old Testament, several commentaries by Gordon Clark, and Pink's Gleanings from Joshua; the last of which I found in a bin of free books outside of the store (reserved for books they think won't sell).
 
I've found that library and other fundraising book sales as well as thrift stores (including Goodwill) can be excellent sources for bargain priced books. Prices tend to range from $0.25-$2. The most expensive ones are maybe $3.50 at the most. Estate and garage sales can also be fruitful.

I've picked up hundreds of books at such sales in the past year or so, too many to list offhand. Many of the books I've picked up have not been Reformed or even theological, so if one is wanting to limit it to just that, you might not have as plentiful a harvest. (These types of sales are a great way to pick up books that you'd probably never pay "real" money for or wouldn't bother to hunt down used copies online but which might be of some interest nonetheless.) I've found a good many of the more popular authors such as Sproul, Boice, Lloyd-Jones and Pink. I've also picked up a good many Biblical Counseling books by authors such as Adams, Mack and Priolo. The chances of picking up something good are about the same as what you'll find in many used bookstores, in my experience, with the bigger sales often having a much bigger selection unless you're talking a really great used bookstore. And the prices will tend to be a lot cheaper.

Finds from the past 6 months include:

The Almost Christian Discovered - Matthew Mead
Heroes - Iain Murray
Spurgeon's Autobiography, vol 2 (One of the more frustrating things is getting partial sets, but at these prices you can't complain)
Reasons for Duty - John Gerstner
The Decline of the West, Vol I - Oswald Spengler
Worship that is Reformed According to Scripture - Hughes Oliphant Old
Logic - Gordon H Clark
Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism - George Marsden
The Unfolding Mystery - Edmund Clowney
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices - Thomas Brooks
The Five Points of Calvinism - Steele and Thomas
By His Grace and For His Glory - Thomas Nettles
Spiritual Depression - Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Great Doctrines of the Bible, Vol 1 - Lloyd-Jones
Christian Baptism - John Murray
The Returning King - Vern S Poythress
Five English Reformers - J.C. Ryle
Genesis in Space and Time - Francis Schaeffer
Pollution and the Death of Man - Schaeffer
Christ's Call to Discipleship - Boice


You can find some of these sales on booksalefinder.com and by checking periodically with your public or university library system to see when they might have a sale. Some have sales every month, others maybe 1-3 times per year. If you get "lucky" you might come across a place with dozens of good theology books that have been sitting there waiting for you to show up and take them off the owner's hands. There are plenty of ways to find out about garage and estate sales. Of course, a lot of this is going to depend on your location and also whether or not you're willing or able to travel to larger sales. Those sales of course attract dealers and will be much more hectic than the typical stroll around the usual book store.
 
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There's been a couple of guys in my area who've dumped their libraries into a local bookstore after going off the rails-- one into Greek Orthodoxy and one into some flavor of neo-orthodoxy. Hate their wandering, but made for some great finds. Have probably picked up 40-50 good titles. Some which come to mind are-- Hetherington's History of the Westminster Assembly, Gerstner's Book on Dispensationalism, AA Hodge Outlines of Theology, David Hall Savior or Servant? in nice hardback, Thomas Manton's Commentary on James, J.I. Packer A Quest for Godliness, Bainton's biography of Martin Luther, Charles Bridge's commentary on Proverbs...

Speaking of that, about a year ago, I saw a notable former Clarkian who apostatized (from the Christian faith completely) selling off a large number of G.H. Clark books on ebay. The price ended up being fairly low and I'm still kicking myself for not pulling the trigger on them.
 
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